Top 25 games of 2013: 25-16

By Keith Stuart, The Guardian

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

It’s that time of year again, when all sense deserts us and we try to distil 12 months of gaming into one list of 25 spectacular titles. And what a year it has been – two console launches, a booming indie scene and several vintage franchises reaching wonderful fruition. In their autumn days, the PS3 and Xbox 360 have seen some of their very greatest releases, while the financially under-performing Wii U has punched above its sales figures with some astonishingly well-crafted games. We’ve been spoiled for choice.

Which is our way of warning you that your favourites may not be on this list. And we say it every year, but this is very much our own highly subjective collection of gaming treats, chosen and savagely fought over by the Guardian’s cabal of reviewers. It is not a dispassionate attempt to scientifically select the greatest games based on some sort of Metacritic algorithm. These are the games we played to death and then played some more. Sometimes they weren’t even the best games, they were the games we loved – and love is a weird and important thing.

So anyway, let’s get cracking with the first 10. Feel free to debate, criticise and question, but remember, Santa doesn’t bring presents to trolls. They are too naughty.